The University of Houston held a press conference on Tuesday morning to unveil its two new logos. The interlocking U and H got its third incarnation, and a secondary Cougar logo was also released. The Houston fan base gave the unveiling a resounding "meh."
Of the two, the interlocking UH got probably the more favorable reviews from the Cougar faithful, while the Cougar just got comparisons to other well-known big cat logos.
Let's take the UH first. It can be found here. It's an update from the current so-called "fat UH" (found here), and benefits from the comparison to the unpopular logo on its way out. There aren't any major changes, but all of the small ones (eliminating the Navy trim, taking the "fat" out of the logo) are moves in the right direction. So far, so good.
However, the new Cougar logo (click here to view) struck most fans as looking similar to something else, like a Cougar Rorschach Test. So what do you see? The Thundercats logo? Penn State? The mouth seems to resemble that of the Kansas State logo. Still others just think the Cougar looks sunburned.
Now, any new logo will be unfamiliar at first, making it hard to accept right off the bat. In all likelihood, we'll all get more used to it as time goes on. But there is some substance to some of the criticisms that are coming towards the athletics department today. The old "wet Cougar" logo may not have been the most popular, but it was distinctive, and that counts for something. Only time will tell if the new Cougar ever fully clicks with the general population as a definitively University of Houston icon.
EDIT: The UH athletics facebook page provides the Cougar logo in just red and white. Looks much cleaner, much less sunburned, much more distinctively Houston, in my opinion.